


I Can't Reach You

by anewkindofthrill



Category: Death Note
Genre: Angst, M/M, Spoilers, continuation of the manga, realizations that come too late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 02:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anewkindofthrill/pseuds/anewkindofthrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, Yagami Raito noticed he couldn't remember L's face anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Reach You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!  
> I've written this fic about 4-5 years ago. It has always kind of been my favourite one-shot I wrote for Death Note (and believe me, there have been MANY), so I decided to re-write it in English. It's really not the writing style I use nowadays, but I still like it, I like the brevity and the certain coldness it holds. There aren't a lot of emotions although Raito certainly feels many things throughout this little story.  
> Since his personality definitely contains some aspects of a psychopath's one (he's not a full-fledged psychopath, though), this is quite fitting for a 1st person POV. (Of course, something I didn't know back then, but let's call it the former me's intuition :D).  
> So yeah, I hope you enjoy it!

One day I noticed that I didn't remember his face.  
 

I had had a bad day and when I came home, I was just glad that Misa was currently making a movie, Ryuuku being with her out of necessity, since she was the owner of his Death Note, so that I could be on my own for a moment.  
 

The personality tests I had to do at the police academy were ridiculous, but the physical training was pretty hard.  
 

So I went to the bathroom to get a shower, staying there a bit longer than usual to relax my tensed up muscles, closing my eyes and thinking.  
 

I thought about how boring life would be without the Death Note.  
 

Well, I wouldn't be stuck up with Misa, but apart from that, everything would be like it is now. The training for the police force, the studying, the success... There would only be a certain lack of spice, there wouldn't be the particular taste which makes my life worth living.  
 

The superiority, the utter difference between a normal man and me, the victory over the boredom, the victory I owed being allowed to become the God of the new world.  
 

It - being God - required a lot of me, unbelievable efforts, without ever being really rewarded. Well, there were some small rewards... My personal little moments of satisfaction.  
 

Watching pro-Kira-demonstrations on TV. Reading the rapidly decreasing percentage of criminal activities all over the world. Politicians, tycoons and the other mighty ones of the world avowing themselves bit by bit clearly to Kira.  
 

These were the occasions which made my flesh crawl with glee, which made my life brilliant and not just barren and boring like all the other ones' lives. Which excited me. Which motivated me to continue with it forever, to never stop, to always want to be the best one, the illustrious one, the unique one.  
 

But all of these "little occasions" weren't nothing - _nothing_ \- compared to the memory of the "big event".  
 

_My combat. My horror. My victory.  
 _

_My triumph._  
 

The absolute triumph.  
 

Having finished my shower, I exited the bathroom and sat down onto my couch, dressed in my most comfortable clothes, a worn out pair of much too big sweat pants and a white longsleeve.  
 

You could call the latter a trophy.  
 

I didn't let anyone see me like this, not even Misa or Ryuuku, no, these moments belonged to me, just to me.  
 

I went through my memories, searched for the memory of _him_ , looked for it and finally found it.  
 

I could remember everything so clearly, my feelings from the time I had forgotten about me being Kira; the moment the memories had come back and me becoming aprubtly aware of the fact that my ingenious plan had been working out and, finally, the moment in which he had fell in my arms onto the ground and died.  
 

The perfect ending of my problem, the perfect solution.  
 

But suddenly I noticed that I couldn't remember his facial expression when he had become aware of me being... _Why not, shit,_ this one thing, this one mental image which made my triumph taste so sweet, his wild despair, his frustration, his realisation...  
 

I still knew full well that his eyes had been almost black and oddly large, how his pale skin had shimmered in the light of the computer screens, that his pitch-black hair had had that strange shade of blue in their shine.  
 

I still knew that he had always eaten only candy, how he had smelled, how he had dressed, how he had used to sit, damn, I could even remember his voice!  
 

After all, he had been something like the most important person in the world to me for a certain amount of time, the most interesting person, the only person who had been able to compete against me.  
 

And the only person to who I could feel something like friendship in times of not being Kira.  
 

And now _I couldn't remember these delicate features anymore._  
 

It got me terribly worked up. I wasn‘t able to sleep for days.  
 

Some day - I knew my chances to find something were practically zero - I decided to go through the few things I had been able to rescue out of the Kira-investigation-headquarters before he could delete or destoy everything. In the box, there were some files, full of his and mine accurate, hardly distinguishable handwritings, some floppies with equity prices of the Yotsuba Group, even a small candy wrapping (after gaping at it shortly like it was something strange from a faraway planet, I let it disappear in my fist and then I put it carefully in my trouser pocket) and... _a copy of a recording from the observation camera._  
 

I had copied it to practise how to be able to observe everything on a recording, just as he did, even when its quality wasn't perfect.  
 

Hastily I stuffed the cassette in our cassette recorder (I've always been a bit conservative and clinged to my belongings) and I fumbled for the remote-control with trembling hands.  
 

I didn't know exactly why it was getting me down so much, why I had to see his face at all costs, because the feeling of triumph in my faceless memories was, if a bit weaker because of the lack of his features, still there. And I possessed enough other sources of motivation.  
 

Anyway, I almost crushed the small black thing in my hand by pressing the start-button.  
 

And there we were.  
 

Ryuuzaki was currently hunching over my shoulder, apparently for the sake of looking at my computer screen, holding a lollipop between his stilted fingers.  
 

I could remember perfectly well how the sound of his smacking drove me mad.  
 

However, he didn't look at my screen at all, like I had assumed at that time - he looked at me, just me, without blinking, and he _smiled_ while I explained how the equity prices of some corporations in Japan could be connected to the recent fatalities with excited gestures, not looking at him.  
 

And Ryuuzaki just kept smiling at me, putting one hand on my shoulder.  
 

I gazed at this scene, stared at his face, I couldn't look away, although everything inside me was screaming, pleading for the pain to stop, for me to turn away from the TV screen, for me to fucking write something into the Death Note so that I didn't have to look at this childlike face that had smiled at me so genuinely.  
 

I had never really noticed this smile. Now I did.  
 

It had been only for me, he had given it only to me, it had been his special Raito-expression when everybody else of the team had been absent.  
 

I pulled up my knees to my chest, folded my arms on them, in which I hid my face.  
 

__________  
 

And now I'm sitting here. In my spot. Even Ryuuku is tired of sitting next to me, he considers the human world much more interesting.  
 

My "colleagues" are sitting everywhere around me, playing cards or gambling, as usual. Out of boredom. Everyone gossips about me having been a much better Shinigami during my lifetime than today.  
 

Everything I have been doing for centuries, every day, every hour, every minute, is sitting in front of the gate to the afterlife that is located exactly across from the gate to the human world.  
 

The only difference is that you can _use_ the gate to the human world. Not the one to the afterlife, though.  
 

And I always, always watch him through the gate, him sitting in our former control room at the HQ, always in the same position, which I‘ve been copying since centuries sitting here in my spot, and I observe him, I just stare at him.  
 

Other humans laugh and are happy in their afterlife.  
 

I haven't seen L Lawliet smile once since the recording.  
  

It breaks my heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading.  
> Feedback such as comments or kudos are greatly appreciated!


End file.
